Psychiatrist
Carl Gustav Jung changed the way we think about the human psyche. For
those who have never heard of him, he was the foremost pioneer
of dream analysis, which is the process of assigning meaning to dreams.
In many ancient traditions dreams were considered to be messages from
the gods.

Jung’s
research asserts the concept of an impersonal or “collective unconscious”
(a type of library containing everything ever known) present in each person’s
unconscious. The inspiration came to Jung from contacting the spirit realm.
Jung claimed that his spirit guide, Philemon (more on “it” later), was
a source of information that gave him crucial insights. According to Don
Matzat, “Jung theorized that all humanity, past and present, were connected
on an unconscious plane. Therefore, deep within each individual was the
collective wisdom of the ages, including all religious, mythical content.
? Jung placed a "scientific" footing under occult phenomenaa and mystical
experience. Jung was deeply involved in the occult and did his doctoral
thesis on parapsychology. He also was interested in Catholic mysticism
and conducted seminars on the teachings
of Ignatius Loyola.”[1]

The
lie detector test and the Meyers-Briggs
Type Indicator (MBTI) are also based on Jung’s theories. MBTI is a personality
and psychological test to see what makes people tick. Are you an extrovert
or an introvert? Do you mentally live in the now or in the future? Do
you plan in advance, or do you move into action without a plan? Take a
personality quiz and find out! Several years ago a church I attended gave
newcomers the MBTI to identify their spiritual gifts. Knowing an individual’s
desires and gifts helped the leadership figure out where they could best
serve the church body. It’s pretty much a given to say that in most congregations
today, 20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work. Which means
desires and gifts have to be put on the back burner when there’s a shortage
of Sunday school teachers. So why take the test in the first place? But
I digress.

Carl
Jung was a “spiritual thinker” who offered Western culture a way back
to religion that places no shame on being human. Spiritual teacher, codependency
therapist and author, Robert Burney, agrees with Jung: “We are not sinful,
shameful human creatures who have to somehow earn Spirituality. We are
Spiritual Beings having a human experience."[2]

If Burney’s
assertion is correct, and the human race isn’t sinful, then the Bible
is nothing more than myths and fables -- and Jesus was a nut job for declaring
He was the Son of God who came into the world to die for the sins of all
mankind. Jesus clearly taught that we are sinners, with a capital S, and
“fall short of the glory of God.” Sin was the reason Jesus went to the
cross. His death was payment for mankind’s sin debt. Thus He threw open
the gates of heaven, and all who believe in Him will be reconciled to
God. If it’s true that we are merely “Spiritual Beings having a human
experience” as Burney claims, the Son of God would have had no reason
to leave His throne in heaven and come to Earth. Which is Burney’s whole
point! If we’re not sinners, we have no need of a Savior!

But
what if Burney and all the other Jungian psychologists have it wrong?
If they do, those that never admit their sin and accept Christ as their
Lord and Savior are in a real pickle. Basically they have a one-way ticket
on the H Train. Once you’re on that train, there’s no getting off, no
turning back.

Bear
with me for a moment while I share the biblical account of the Fall of
Man (and woman, if you must). “When the woman saw that the fruit of the
tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable
for gaining wisdom (emphasis added), she took some and ate it.” Because
the fruit was pleasing to the eye Eve gave into temptation. She came,
she saw, she ate. Bingo! Her eyes were opened. In one split second Eve
went from God-centeredness to self-centeredness. From thereon out
everything went downhill. “She also gave some to her husband who was with
her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they
realized they were naked”(Genesis 3:6). When Adam and Eve deliberately
disobeyed God, sin, which is deadlier than the AIDS virus, entered into
the world and infected all humankind. And the only sin cure is Jesus Christ!

Which
brings me back to Carl Jung. As I mentioned above, Jung was considered
a “spiritual thinker,” albeit his lofty ideas came from Eastern
mysticism, not Christianity or Judaism. The man was no ordinary psychologist
by any stretch. Actually, he thought of himself as a “spiritist.” According
to Elliot Miller, “The movement that Jung initiated is much closer in
nature to a neopagan (Aryan) cult than the scientific psychiatric discipline
that it has always claimed to be. It is not just religious but
a religion.”[3]
And a pagan religion at that!

Ponder
this for a moment. When Carl Jung was three years old a “spirit guide”
named Philemon contacted him. The spirit was one of his teachers and tutored
him all of his life. Other spirits came to him as well and he made this
observation about them: “Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought
home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which
I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life.
Philemon represented a force that was not myself. In my fantasies I held
conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously
thought. [?] Psychologically, Philemon represented supeerior insight.”[4]There was no reason
for Jung to believe that his visitors were benevolent spirits; nevertheless
he chose to believe they were. Could the “forces that were not myself”
have been the forces of evil? Absolutely! Scripture tells us that Satan
masquerades as an angel of light, which is why John gave this warning:
“Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they
are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world”
(I John 4). John calls the devil the “father of lies” and addressed the
Gnostics with these
harsh words, “You belong to your father, the devil,” he says, “and you
want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning,
not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies,
he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies”
(John 8:44).

Carl
Jung has been called the “Father of Neo-Gnosticism
and the New
Age Movement” and rightly so. Dr. Satinover comments, "One of the
most powerful modern forms of Gnosticism is without question Jungian psychology,
both within or without the Church."[5]

Jung’s
view of good and evil is worth noting. To quote the Rev. Ed Hird, “Jung
believed that ‘the Christ-symbol lacks wholeness in the modern psychological
sense, since it does not include the dark side of things...’ For Jung,
it was regrettable that Christ in his goodness lacked a shadow side, and
God the Father, who is the Light, lacked darkness.”[6]

Further,
Jung believed not that good should overcome evil; good should be integrated
with evil in order to achieve wholeness. “The homosexual who has the courage
to ‘come out’, for example, is welcoming and integrating the darker and
'opposite-sex side of the personality. There can be no moral condemnation
when wholeness is achieved.”[7]

The
Apostle Paul has something to say about uniting good and evil, (my comments
in brackets) “Do not be joined to unbelievers. What do right (good) and
wrong (evil) have in common? Can light (good) and darkness (evil) be friends?
How can Christ (our standard of goodness) and Satan (pure evil) agree?
What does a believer (good) have in common with an unbeliever (evil)?”
(1 Cor. 6:14, 15) The answer to Paul’s last question is, in a word, nothing!
The Prophet Habakkuk says of God, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil;
you cannot tolerate wrong” (Habakkuk 1:13).

Unfortunately,
Jungianism has influenced not only our popular culture, but Christian
teaching as well, in spite of the fact that God expressly forbids practicing
sorcery in any way shape or form. (Leviticus 19:26-31; II Chronicles 33:6;
Isaiah 47:8-11) J. Budziszewski, professor of Government and Philosophy
at the University of Texas, says this about Jungianism: "[It] is based
on damnable lies about the nature of good, evil, God, and the human soul.
Yet these lies are being taught in ostensibly Christian seminaries and
promoted by ostensibly Christian psychotherapists. I shuddered when I
spoke to a Christian lady who said that her minister had been teaching
her to 'gain strength from her dark side.'"[8]

Amazingly,
Jung believed that "It is possible for a man to attain totality, to become
whole, only with the co-operation of the spirit of darkness..." Jung said
that opposites always balance one another and “onesideness, though it
lends momentum, is a sign of barbarism."[9]
Who knew?

"How
can these dangerous teachings be confronted?" asks Budziszewski. His answer
is to inform Christians who have never heard of Carl Jung about his New
Age teaching. Many years ago when I first heard about Jungianism it was
described to me as a kind of psychoanalysis that’s open to "spirituality."
(Not knowing what was really behind “spirituality” I started reading “Christian
psychology books.”)

The
catchword “spirituality” has a whole host of meanings. For Carl Jung spirituality
"blended psychological reductionism with gnostic spirituality to produce
a modern variant of mystical, pagan polytheism in which the multiple ‘images
of the instincts’ (his ‘archetypes’) are worshipped as gods."[10]

The
difficulty, says Budziszewski, is that there's a little truth mixed in
with Jung's lies. "Through a little twist, he turns the truth that for
the time being God tolerates certain evils into the lie that God is beyond
good and evil. Through another twist, he turns the truth that we must
reckon with what we repress into the lie that we must achieve a reconciliation
with what is evil. To dispel this kind of confusion, we need to identify
each truth, but show how he distorts it."

For
"the wolves of the flock," who fully understand what Jung's ideas mean,
and teach them anyway, Budziszewski gives this advice: "Like the Gnostics
against whom St. Paul and the early church waged spiritual battle, these
people don't need instruction, but rebuke. Christ gave disciplinary authority
to the church for a reason (emphasis added). He meant it to be used."

Budziszewski
says we face two obstacles to exposing Jung's earlier writings: (1) His
writings were composed in a misleading style. (2) His teachings twisted
the truth rather than ignoring it. He suggests that Christians respond
to this dangerous philosophy in two ways: First, become informed about
the deceptive teachings of Jung's psychology. Second, familiarize yourself
with the metaphysical concepts and techniques of New Agers.

If someone
claims to be a Christian and yet embraces an incompatible, non-Christian
pluralistic worldview, he/she has not received the Spirit of God. In Scripture
believers are admonished, "give no regard to mediums and familiar spirits;
do not seek after them, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God"
(Leviticus 19:31). How much plainer could God be?

Because
of what we know about Carl Jung, it would be wrong for Christians to "seek
after" his dangerous worldview. Christians play a part in his twisted
religion when they incorporate the theories and therapies that come from
dream analysis, 12-step programs, inner healing, and through personality
types and tests. Apostle Paul warns, "Do not be conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what
is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2).

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I suspect
that I’m going to receive a lot of hate mail for daring to express my
views on psychology in the Church. I don’t pretend to be an expert on
this subject. Far from it. I’m only expressing my personal opinion and
the opinion of many other Christians who are opposed to meshing sorcery
with Christianity for any reason. And that’s exactly what so-called “Christian
psychology” does. It might help some people, but at what cost?

“We
must carefully discern the theories and practices of modern psychology
before we visit them upon the people of God.” Don Matzat

Marsha
West is the Founder and Editor of the E-Mail Brigade News Report, an online
news report for conservative people of faith. Marsha is a freelance writer
specializing in Christian worldview. She is a regular contributor to NewsWithViews.com,
Alainsnewsletter.com, CapitolHillCoffeeHouse.com, plus her commentaries
appear in MichNews.com and bibleteacher.org.

Marsha
is also designer and webmaster of a Christian apologetics website, On
Solid Rock Resources. She is currently writing a series of children's
books for homeschoolers. Marsha and her husband reside in historic Jacksonville
Oregon.

If
Burney’s assertion is correct, and the human race isn’t sinful, then the
Bible is nothing more than myths and fables -- and Jesus was a nut job
for declaring He was the Son of God who came into the world to die for
the sins of all mankind.